Letter: Most Jewish people embrace a homeland

Most Jewish people embrace a homeland

In his Another Voice, “Jewish people also protest treatment of Palestinians,” Norm Tederous states: “the most prominent voices in defense of Palestinians come from honorable Jewish researchers and intellectuals” – including, among others, Noam Chomsky. It is worth noting that Chomsky, who has devoted his life to vilifying Israel and the United States, supported Sayyed Nasrallah, the leader of the terrorist group Hezbollah, in 2006. He has also signed a petition defending Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson.

It is curious why Jews like Chomsky, Richard Falk, Norman Finkelstein and others espouse this hostility. Perhaps the answer lies in their embrace of leftist ideas with its secular, one-world view. In doing so, they reject both Judaism and a nationalist identity.

These people are what historian Isaac Deutscher called “non-Jewish Jews.” History is replete with them – Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky come to mind. Support for leftism among Jews has a long and unfortunate history, but to suggest they are a majority or “prominent” is misleading and disingenuous.

Jews who believe in God and in the Torah are not on the left – they embrace Judaism and indeed a homeland for their people. Yet Hamas and the Palestinian Authority refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and, to the extent Palestinians have wanted peace, they have wanted it without the Jewish State of Israel. Tederous reveals this anti-Zionism with the claim that the Palestinians “are the hapless victims” – yet another pro forma response of the left; only this time, he puts these non-Jewish Jews’ anti-Semitic face on it.